Attack The Blog

If you pretend that nobody else on the internet has made this pun before, it's actually quite clever.

Anyway, this post is something of a trailer to let you know about the barely-containable excitement that lies in store for viewers of The Incredible Suit over the next week.

To celebrate the release of the directorial debut of this site's second tallest interviewee, Mr Joseph Cornish, the whole week will be given over to a series of posts which include rambling interviews with some of Attack The Block's toppest talents:

Acting types Luke Treadaway, Jodie Whittaker, John Boyega,

Simon Howard, Franz Drameh and Mr Nicholas John Frost!
Production designing type Marcus Rowland!

Directing of photography type Tom Townend!

Editing type Jonathan Amos!

And, of course, megaphone-wielding type Joe Cornish!

There'll also be a chance to win some shit-hot Attack The Block merchandise, although the exact level of shitty hotness has yet to be confirmed, so don't get too excited about that bit. It might be a photo of Joe Cornish squeezing one of my breasts.

The "fun" begins tomorrow with my review of the film (spoiler: I liked it) and continues until Friday or everyone gets sick of it, whichever comes first.

In the meantime, here's a condensed, and much more professional, version of what to expect over the next five days:

Keeping The British End Up

Titan Books are still winning the race to send me books to waffle about, and as much as I'm loving their work it seems a shame that Aurum Press haven't found time to throw a spare copy of 'The Making Of The Empire Strikes Back' my way. I expect Ebury Press are also wishing they'd popped 'The Complete Making Of Indiana Jones' in the post too, and I can only imagine how hard Hodder Paperbacks must be thinking about passing me a copy of Michael Caine's autobiography 'The Elephant To Hollywood' (just to clarify, that's the paperback. Hardbacks are a bit cumbersome on the train).

Anyway, in the absence of any of those, here's Titan's new edition of Simon Sheridan's 'Keeping The British End Up', a big, hard look at the sleazy, saucy world of British sex films.

After spending quite some time looking at the pictures in this book, and being disappointed that there were so many of Robin Askwith in alarming underpants, I noticed there were also some words, so I got dressed and gave them a look too. Turns out they're all very interesting.

Given that I've never seen films like Confessions Of A Window Cleaner, The Sexplorer or What's Up Nurse! (take a wild guess), 'Keeping The British End Up' is a massively informative tome covering the history, social context and legacy of the X-certificate industry that rose up and stood proud in the UK between 1958 and 1983. Not only am I now au fait with the particular talents of stars like Mary Millington and Sue Longhurst, I'm also primed with plenty of trivia for my next film quiz. E, as they say, g:

• Jeremy Bulloch (the original Star Wars trilogy's Boba Fett) starred in Can You Keep It Up For A Week? as an accident-prone berk "continually getting into sexual misunderstandings with luscious females". Sample dialogue: "I've got an adjustable spanner in my pocket." He means his cock.
• Christopher Wood, co-writer of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, also wrote the novels and scripts of the Confessions Of... series, which might explain why his Bond films are practically sex comedies.
• Britain's first "nudie movie", Nudist Paradise, was shot in "glorious Nudiscope", a process which would improve a lot of today's movies exponentially.

Sheridan's loving attention to detail (despite being fully aware that most of the films he's talking about are, literally and figuratively, a load of balls) and exhaustive synopses of 158 examples of the genre make for fascinating stuff, and the stills might be titillating but the full-colour shots of some of the posters for these films really do make you want to stand up and salute.

Bravo. I'm spent.

Shameless Plug For An Attack The Block Competition That's Nothing To Do With Me

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that Attack The Block is released next week. It's very good. What's also very good is this poster:

And as if that wasn't enough things that are very good, the Attack The Block Facebook page is running a competition where you can win an Attack The Block hoodie, ideal for wearing while out mugging innocent people killing aliens.

All you have to do is look out for the above poster in any of these locations: Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, London (Barking, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Hackney, Hammersmith, Haringey, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, Westminster).

If you see one, take a photo of it and post it on the Facebook wall to be in with a chance of bagging some security camera-defying casual wear.

I know I don't normally post this kind of thing but I've got a good reason and if all goes according to plan you'll be thanking me this time next week.

How To Sell Your Film Via The Medium Of Audience Reaction Videos

I haven't seen Insidious, the new horrorsplasm from James Wan, who we can all thank for the Saw franchise. I was seriously thinking about it until I watched the helpful infra-red audience reaction video which lets us know what emotions we could expect to experience throughout the film:

Looks boring. Think I'll give it a miss.

13 Assassins

Here's what to expect from the 120 minutes (minus credits) of Takashi Miike's new samurai smackdown, 13 Assassins:

Six out of ten.

How To Fall From A Height And Land Like A Bit Of A Tit, By The Movies

Here's hammer-wielding god of thunder "John" Thor in a poster for his film:

He's trying, bless him, but he hasn't quite mastered the art of falling from a height and landing like a bit of a tit, one of Hollywood's favourite go-to stances for action types. But how does he compare to some of the previous exponents of this peculiar trend? Let's take a half-hearted look! 

Toad, X-Men

Toad hasn't quite got the correct angle of elevation on the extended left arm that would become a signature element of falling from a height and landing like a bit of a tit, but he makes up for it with an unconvincing CGI tongue. 6/10.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2

Spidey's rocking an impressive stance here: just look

how straight that left arm is. Although with his legs

spread like that I bet that's not the only rip in his suit.

7/10.

Matthew Patel, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Oh, I say. That's textbook. Though I'll have to

deduct a point for the lack of eye contact.

9/10.

Baby Doll, Sucker Punch

An interesting attempt to triplicate the stance here: sadly the other two aren't trying hard enough. Also it's by far the worst film of the lot.

3/10.

I'm sure there must be more of these, but you try Googling "film characters landing from a height with left leg bent, right leg out at 90 degrees, right hand on the floor and left arm outstretched like a ponce" and see what you get. Chances are you'll get this blog post.

Hanna

It's just over a year since a teenage girl with remarkable ass-kicking skillz blazed an expletive-laden trail across cinema screens and delivered a breath of fresh air to audiences bored of watching middle-aged men getting all the action. Thirteen months later, Kick-Ass's Hit Girl hands the baton to Hanna's Hanna, who stares at it blankly, fires an arrow through it then mumbles a nonsensical payoff line at it which nobody understands.

It's hard to see how Hanna wouldn't work: the story of a girl raised in the wilderness to be a ruthless assassin by Eric Bana (himself no slouch with the assassining stuff), then forced to go on the run, simultaneously hunting and hunted by hard-assed CIA bitch Cate Blanchett across continents, with some potentially devastating revelations about her own identity to discover along the way should be the perfect appetiser before the summer's main course of blockbusting action spectacugasms.

Unfortunately it's more like a fortune cookie: bland, hollow and with nothing useful or interesting to say. Saoirse Ronan can run and fight a bit, but her permanently expressionless chops never let us anywhere near her character; Eric Bana gets one spectacularly-shot and choreographed fight scene and not much else, while Cate Blanchett, one of the world's most overrated actors, is as unconvincing as her hair.

With Pride And Prejudice and Atonement director Joe Wright behind the camera you might expect some dramatic interplay or character depth, but instead you get a series of Chemical Brothers music videos linked by frustratingly unfulfilled scenes of potential interest (Hanna's sexual awakening is hinted at then forgotten about; the truth about her past is banal and irrelevant), a thread of incongruous comic relief from a British family in a motorhome, and the year's oddest casting in cuddly Tom Hollander as a sadistic hitman with an inexplicable wardrobe and neo-Nazi sidekicks.

Still, if it's a violent gore-fest you're after, Hanna is the film to see. Don't just take my word for it: the IMDb Parents' Guide tells you all you need to know.

Hit Girl must be shitting herself.